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⚡ Quick Take

• In our exclusive interview, The Vampire Lestat/Interview with the Vampire showrunner Rolin Jones promises that we WILL see Daniel’s vampiric turning on our screens IF we get a season four.
• Armand turned Daniel into a vampire at the end of Interview with the Vampire season two, but we never got to see the actual moment.
• Armand turning Daniel is a huge moment for the pair in Anne Rice’s books, and fans are hoping to finally see it adapted on screen.

In season two of Interview with the Vampire, something very important took place that was both expected and shocking. After centuries without making a fledgeling, The Vampire Armand turned Daniel Molloy into a vampire. Of course, Armand is Daniel’s vampiric maker in the Anne Rice books as well, but the timeline is very different in the series and the books. Still, fans of Armand, Daniel, and Devil’s Minion were delighted with this turn of events. HOWEVER, the actual moment of Daniel’s turning wasn’t shown on screen in Interview with a Vampire season two, only its aftermath some months later. And this has left fans curious about whether we’ll ever see Daniel’s turning in full. A desire compounded by how important the scene is to the relationship between Armand and Daniel in the Anne Rice book, Queen of the Damned. Armed with fan curiosity and my own, I took the question to showrunner Rolin Jones in the lead-up to The Vampire Lestat. So, will we see Armand turn Daniel into a vampire on screen? …Yes, but not yet.

The Vampire Lestat showrunner, Rolin Jones, is a true gift to fans. It’s a known fact that he always goes out of his way to speak to those who love the show at events and offers up his true perspectives and insights when he’s able. And, in response to the question of whether Daniel’s turning into a vampire would make it to our screens, Jones was much the same. “Look, I’ll do this.” Jones said, sincerely squaring with me, “If they give us a season four, you’ll see it.”

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Next to Jones, Sam Reid and Jacob Anderson burst out into cackles. “You’re outrageous,” Reid told Jones between laughs. And Anderson shook his head, “Diabolical.” But you know what? It works for me. I got the real sense that Jones wanted us to know that even if it wasn’t coming this season, it was on his mind to film. And this offered notion wasn’t meant to be dangled in front of us like a carrot, but merely a pretty honest offering to fans. To me, it felt like Jones wanted to level with us. The scene isn’t coming this season, but it is coming. I know it may not be the answers fans expected or wanted to hear, but where other showrunners may have obscured and teased, Jones’ honesty really struck me as a gift to those who are hoping for this scene. And, with all that said, turning or not, there’s still a lot for fans of Devil’s Minion to feel excited about… and that’s said with one whole episode we haven’t yet seen.

AMC

In a recent interview with The Vampire Lestat‘s Assad Zaman, who plays Armand, Zaman shared more about Armand turning Daniel into a Vampire, “Vampirism to Armand, I think, acts like a form of self-flagellation, similar to the way prayer and punishment go hand in hand. So yes, there’s agency in turning Daniel, but also, he’s punishing a man whom he also worships in a fucked up way.” And I feel we simply must see this blend of worship and punishment manifest. Plus, as mentioned, it’s a pivotal scene for Armand and Daniel; one worth finally bringing to our screens.

AMC

So, Rolin Jones, if you’re reading this. Please know that telling me in a junket that, if we get a season four of Interview with the Vampire/The Vampire Lestat, we’ll see the scene of Daniel’s vampiric turning in full does count as a blood pact which cannot be dissolved.

Fans, if you’re reading this and you want to see Armand turning Daniel into a vampire in full color and sound, I guess we’d better keep converting the masses to the wonder of this series and tuning in to watch The Vampire Lestat as it airs on AMC and AMC+ (on Sundays at 9 pm ET/PT and midnight, respectively).

Rotem Rusak is Editor-in-Chief of Nerdist. She is waiting for Armand and Daniel to finally get together so one of her canon ships can finally sail on The Vampire Lestat.

Originally published on June 8, 2026.

The post We WILL See Daniel’s Vampire Turning, Promises Rolin Jones… BUT Not Until Season 4 of IWTV/THE VAMPIRE LESTAT (Exclusive) appeared first on Nerdist.

This Supreme Court term has no shortage of high-profile immigration-related cases. But as the justices wait until the last minute to rule on the more controversial ones—namely birthright citizenship—on Tuesday, they delivered a decision in a sleeper case that could have implications for millions of green card holders living in the United States.

In a 6-3 decision signed by Justice Clarence Thomas, the conservative supermajority held that border officers don’t need to have “clear and convincing evidence” that a lawful permanent resident committed a “crime involving moral turpitude“—a vaguely defined immigration law term that can cover a wide spectrum of crimes generally involving intent to defraud or cause bodily harm—before jeopardizing their rights and ability to stay in the country. In other words, agents at the border have just been given exceptional discretion to bypass protections generally afforded to green card holders.

In the case at issue, Blanche v. Lau, Muk Choi Lau, a Chinese-born green card holder was charged in New Jersey in 2012 with trademark counterfeiting. Lau then traveled abroad and tried to re-enter the United States at the airport with his green card. Under federal statute, returning lawful permanent residents are supposed to be treated as having already been admitted into the country—meaning they are essentially just coming back home.  

But a border agent determined that, because of Lau’s pending criminal charges for a “crime involving moral turpitude,” he fit into an exception and could be classified as someone “seeking admission” (rather than already admitted) into the United States. Lau was paroled in, but had his green card confiscated. After he pleaded guilty to the charges, the federal government started removal proceedings against him.

An immigration judge found that Lau could be removed, but following an appeal, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed. The appeals court concluded that the border office didn’t have enough evidence at that time to show that Lau had committed a crime and that he should have been treated under the default presumption that he had already been admitted into the United States due to his lawful permanent status.

“Critically,” Judge Richard J. Sullivan and the appeals panel ruled last year, “the INA [Immigration and Nationality Act] does not provide that an LPR (Lawful Permanent Resident] may be treated as seeking admission when he has been ‘charged with a crime’ or is ‘believed to have committed a crime; it permits such a treatment only when an LPR ‘has committed’ a crime.”

In Tuesday’s decision, the Supreme Court majority led by Justice Thomas vacated the Second Circuit’s judgment, arguing that the government had correctly reclassified Lau and that the federal statute didn’t actually require the border officer to “have clear and convincing evidence that Lau had committed a crime involving moral turpitude before deeming him an applicant for admission.”

The ruling in Blanche v. Lau is likely to create a chilling effect on lawful permanent residents traveling overseas. Notably, it follows proposed rules by the Trump administration to force immigrants to pursue green card applications from abroad, and make it considerably more expensive for green card holders to apply for US citizenship.

In her dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the Court’s decision undermined the “benefits and security that come with having a green card.” In the worst-case scenario, Justice Jackson reasoned, the government could “merely assume” at the border that a green card holder should be demoted to “seeking admission” and only justify that determination with “post hoc evidence.”

“I worry that the Court has now handed the Government a massive blank check.”

“I worry that the Court has now handed the Government a massive blank check,” Justice Jackson wrote. Green card holders, she added, “are as close to citizenship as one can get absent naturalization…Today, the majority ignores that crucial fact and empowers Government officials to act accordingly.”

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick with the American immigration Council noted on social media that the Supreme Court’s ruling does not mean that green card holders can simply be ordered deported by border agents. But classifying lawful permanent residents returning from abroad as “seeking admission” could open up a wide range of negative legal and practical consequences for them, including the possibility of detention and, eventually, deportation proceedings requiring a higher burden of proof for defense.

“It is very disturbing in the breadth of its reach, and I think we can expect border officers to overuse the power that they’re given here,” said Nancy Morawetz, a law professor and director of the Crimmigration Clinic at NYU. She worries about the implications for green card holders who could be subject to other grounds of inadmissibility, such as offenses involving controlled substances. “There are a lot of people who could be at real risk if the government doesn’t really have to have any proof…It’s very, very dangerous.”

Allen Orr, former president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the ruling lowers the due process standards green card holders are entitled to. “We’re giving a border officer the ability to determine if it’s a crime of moral turpitude and you might not even be guilty of it,” he said. “If the facts are clear and the person is excludable and does not deserve to be in the United States, then take their green card but afford them a process greater than some border officer at the port of entry.”

He warned on Bluesky: “The danger of this ruling is that it creates an incentive to use the border as a place where rights are diminished.” Orr said it further sends a troubling message to lawful permanent residents. “I already have clients who have green cards who are just afraid to travel,” he said, “because the government has said, as a green card holder, you’re just now a long-term visitor, we could deny you for anything.” The decision, he concluded, “aligns with the goal of excluding and removing people from the United States that are not US-born nationals.”

California intends to sue the Trump administration over its deal to end an offshore wind project proposed off Morro Bay on the Central Coast.

Modern SSDs have a limited number of write cycles before they expire. Now, OpenAI is scrambling to fix a flawed logging implementation that has been shortening the lives of Codex users' solid state drives (SSDs) with excessive data writes and lowering the devices' value by a significant amount of money. A bug report opened last week for the company's Codex coding agent warns of the consequences in its title: "Codex SQLite feedback logs can write ~640 TB/year and rapidly consume SSD endurance #28224." "On my machine, after about 21 days of uptime, the main SSD has written about 37 TB," wrote developer Rui Fan, a project management committee member of Apache Flink. "Process/file-level checks show Codex SQLite logs are the main continuous writer. "That extrapolates to roughly 640 TB/year. On a 1 TB SSD, that is about 640 full-drive writes per year. Some consumer SSDs are rated around 600 TBW, so this could consume roughly a full drive's warranted write endurance in less than a year." SSDs have a limited lifespan, often measured in terabytes written (TBW). This number varies by model and capacity. Samsung's 2025 9100 PRO SSDs, for example, promise 600 TBW for the 1 TB SSD. And after that point, we expect their performance to degrade and failure becomes more likely. The problem with Codex is that it has been writing so much logging data to SSD storage that users have become concerned they're shortening the life of their hardware. Another developer posting in Rui Fan's thread remarked, "Codex analyzed the disk usage and says this bug cost me $38.64 in drive value of my Samsung 990 2 TB NVMe." This dev subsequently cited the Codex-generated estimate of the overall cost of this bug: "This regression plausibly burned low-single-digit millions of dollars of SSD endurance across users during the March-June Window." Codex's economic impact assessment assumes a cost of $0.13 per TB written to SSDs. This is based on this formula: TB written × (SSD price / SSD TBW). So given a 1 TB SSD, we estimate that Rui Fan incurred a cost of $12.33 for 37 TB of squandered storage. (Cost per TBW = SSD price / SSD endurance = $200 / 600 TBW = $0.333 per TB written.) A more spacious and more costly SSD with a higher TBW rating would cost less per wasted byte (e.g. $0.25 per TB for a $300 / 1200 TBW 2 TB Samsung 9100 PRO SSD). In December 2025, Codex devs announced plans to add telemetry by default (except where disallowed by law) to the Codex CLI. But this issue has to do with local diagnostic logging, which was introduced around the time the app debuted last year and is also on by default. The logs stay on the device unless included by the user in a feedback report. Concerns about excessive write operations using OpenAI's Codex have been surfacing in the project's GitHub repo for several months. A spokesperson for OpenAI confirmed that company engineers are aware of the problem and are working to fix it – something evident from several recent pull requests intended to address the problem. We're told that these logs are intended to help OpenAI engineers diagnose issues and that the problem was the result of high-volume data that was being stored in a way that created far more disk activity than anticipated. While purported fixes have been landing and the company has made some progress, users continue to file problems. The issue appears to date back to work done in February to write app-server SQLite logs at TRACE level, which emits more verbose logs than, say, ERROR level. We note that Codex, presumably running GPT-5.3, reviewed this particular series of commits. That makes it all the more surprising that the code was so ill-conceived. ®

On Tuesday, eight protesters who the Justice Department accused of having connections to antifa were sentenced to decades in federal prison over a shooting outside a Texas immigration detention center that left one police officer wounded. 

The demonstrator who was convicted of shooting and wounded the officer, former US Marine Corps reservist Benjamin Song, was convicted of attempted murder in March and received a 100-year prison term. Seven other protesters received sentences ranging from 30 to 70 years. 

US District Judge Reed O’Connor, a George W. Bush nominee, said the defendants in what has become known as the Prairieland trial, didn’t participate in a protest but “an assault on democracy.”

Justice Department prosecutors under the Trump administration have made extensive use of wide-ranging conspiracy charges in cases like Prairieland, where some of the defendants who received decades-long sentences were not involved with the planning of the protest in question and left when guards at the facility asked them to.

As my colleague Schuyler Mitchell wrote in September, the Trump administration signed a September 22 executive order designating “antifa” a domestic terrorist organization and a memo three days later, known as NSPM-7, assigning federal agencies to “investigate, prosecute, and disrupt” protesters engaging in “anti-capitalism,” “anti-fascism,” and “anti-Americanism.” The Prairieland trial was one of the first tests of the White House’s ability to make such claims stick.

The defendants, who were protesting the Prairieland immigration detention center in Alvarado, Texas, denied that they were affiliated with antifa, a decentralized term for various left-wing activists and anti-fascist groups, and were demonstrating in support of immigrants being detained at the facility.

In November, seven other defendants who were present at Prairieland pleaded guilty to federal charges of providing material support for terrorism or damaging property. 

The Trump administration has deployed allegations of terrorism against protesters at an unprecedented scale. As my colleague Sophie Hurwitz pointed out, the Justice Department charged 15 Minneapolis-area residents last week with felony “conspiracy to impede or injure federal officers,” and secured a conviction on the same charges against three Spokane, Washington, protesters. Both groups protested ICE facilities.

President Donald Trump is once again floating the idea of running for an unconstitutional third term.

At a speech in Macungie, Pennsylvania, on Tuesday, Trump fell back on one of his favorite talking points: winning elections.

“We won it by a lot,” he said, referring (hopefully) to the 2024 election. “Maybe we should run again. Should we run again?”

The crowd at the Mack Trucks facility responded with cheers. Chuckling, Trump continued, “I’d like to do it. I’d like to do it.”

Trump in Pennsylvania: "Maybe we should run again. Should we run one more time? I'd like to do that" pic.twitter.com/wPewSq7oEX

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 23, 2026

As the president knows, running for a third term would violate the Constitution. Even if it was allowed, it seems unlikely that the 80-year-old could physically manage it: Trump regularly dozes off during Cabinet meetings, and his health status is murky at best.

Trump has repeatedly referenced running for a third term, and has said in the past that he is “not joking” when he brings it up. The president has also reportedly discussed running again with his lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, who’s writing a book about that very scenario.

The Trump Organization even sells “Trump 2028” hats for $55. Last year, the price was $50, but the Trump family is clearly in a hard spot financially: They’ve only made $4 billion since Trump’s second term.

⚡ Quick Take

• The YouTube-famous celebrity interview series, Hot Ones, is expanding to Netflix with Extra Heat.

What was once simply a YouTube-exclusive series about interviewing celebrities while eating hot wings is now moving to Netflix and becoming a full-fledged show called Hot Ones: Extra Heat. This odd interview format has gained wild popularity since its inception in 2015, and the publishing YouTube channel, First We Feast, now has 15.5 million subscribers.

Kit Karzen/Netflix

Some of the biggest trending celebrities have appeared on the show, from Pedro Pascal to Tom Holland. The show also has various smaller spinoffs. Hot Ones Wing Pong and Hot Ones Versus make celebrities face off against one another, enduring the spice.

Watching famous people struggle to eat spicy food has become popular enough for Netflix to want a piece of the pie. Netflix revealed that the first guests will be the stars of an upcoming Netflix show, The Hawk. Will Ferrell, Fortune Feimster, and Jimmy Tatro will appear in the premiere.

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Hot Ones will continue to exist on YouTube, alongside its spinoffs. Netflix will use Extra Heat as a way of promoting its shows. It will take place in “settings inspired by major moments on Netflix.” Sean Evans will host the series of 30-minute specials.

Several clips from the original show have gone internet-famous, which definitely contributed to its popularity. A clip of Jennifer Lawrence starting to cry as she eats a wing was used to create a viral audio on TikTok. Her sobbing “what do you mean?!” even became its own meme format. Take a look at this clip posted by First We Feast.

While I have to wonder how anybody came up with the premise, First We Feast must be doing something right. This deal with Netflix will expand the Hot Ones franchise while allowing them to continue posting their own YouTube content.

The first episode of Hot Ones: Extra Heat will premiere on Netflix on July 13.

The post Netflix to Create HOT ONES Spinoff, EXTRA HEAT appeared first on Nerdist.

President Donald Trump is threatening to sue ABC News over its reporting on his administration’s ongoing failure in renovating the Reflecting Pool at the Lincoln Memorial. He is now pushing the outlet to repeat his lies about renovations to the monument during the Obama and Biden administrations. In a social media post, Trump claimed that ABC “failed to report that their close ‘friends,’…

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A cartoon by Tim Campbell. Related | Trump deflects from Reflecting Pool failure by arresting ‘vandals’…

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President Trump claimed Tuesday that Iran had “no missile capability”—one of six bold-faced lies that directly contradicts what he said last week.

“Now we’re leaving Iran with no Navy, no Air Force, no antiaircraft, no missile capability, no nuclear program. We’re leaving them without any nuclear capacity, and they’ve agreed to that. And we’re getting along quite well,” Trump said at a rally in Macungie, Pennsylvania on Tuesday. “We can fly over Tehran just at will. Nobody’s gonna do anything to us.”

Trump: We're leaving Iran with no navy, no air force, no anti-aircraft . no missile capability, no nuclear program, no nuclear capacity, and they've agreed to that, and we're getting along quite well pic.twitter.com/Fw0pEx3sKD

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 23, 2026

First off, Iran still has a navy. Even though the U.S. has sunk multiple Iranian naval ships, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps still have active naval units—they wouldn’t be able to control the Strait of Hormuz if they didn’t. Iran’s nuclear energy program remains intact, as does their capacity to develop it in the future. They also still maintain an aging collection of aircraft. Last month, The New York Times reported that Iran still had “substantial missile capabilities,” including ballistic missiles. Trump admitted as much last week, much to the chagrin of war hawks both at home and in Israel.

“We’ll be working on a parallel effort with the Gulf nations to address nonnuclear issues, such as [Iran’s] conventional ballistic missiles,” Trump said at the G7 summit on Wednesday. “I mean, they have to have some. Because other people have some. You gotta have some. Somebody said ‘You shouldn’t give them more … sir, you shouldn’t let them have any missile.’ … What am I gonna do? I’m gonna let Saudi Arabia have missiles, but they can’t have them?”

Trump can’t even keep his lies straight. He and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed the U.S. had decimated Iran’s entire military in Operation Epic Fury back in the spring, and that they weren’t a threat. Since then, Iran has continued to either use, hold, or develop every single thing Trump said he had taken away from them.

Indian billionaire Gautam Adani was facing federal fraud and bribery charges in the U.S. Then he met privately with Donald Trump Jr.

Adani is the second-richest Asian in the world with an estimated net worth around $88.6 billion, according to a Forbes analysis. In November 2024, Adani and two other executives at the Indian Energy Company were indicted in Brooklyn for allegedly bribing Indian government officials in order to secure large solar energy projects and lying to U.S. investors about it, according to a Justice Department press release.

Adani and his co-conspirators were charged under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, an anti-bribery statute passed in 1977 that Trump paused for “national security” purposes in February 2025.

Adani’s fortune changed after he met with the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., in Ahmedabad, India, last November. What was discussed during the meeting is not known, but the meeting itself was not previously reported until Bloomberg got the scoop Tuesday.

Seven months later, in May 2025, the DOJ dropped its charges against Adani. In a brief filing, prosecutors wrote that the department had “reviewed this case and … decided, in its prosecutorial discretion, not to devote further resources to these criminal charges against individual defendants.”

The billionaire’s sudden good luck was met by an excited market, which surged stocks in his companies and temporarily skyrocketed Adani’s wealth, pushing him into top spot as the wealthiest person in Asia.

A spokesperson for Trump Jr. told Bloomberg that the meeting had “zero to do” with the DOJ’s decision to drop its case against Adani.

Anthropic is killing off its existing Claude in Slack app in favor of an always-on agentic alternative dubbed Claude Tag that will listen and learn from everything it’s given access to. Claude Tag can now join organizational Slack instances “as a team member,” according to Anthropic’s announcement, where it will have access to whatever channels domain administrators decide upon, as well as the tools, data, and codebases they contain. Anyone in a channel with Claude Tag can tag @Claude to delegate tasks to the bot, which will be able to perform a variety of actions and build context about its environment based on what flows through a channel. “We see Claude Tag as the beginning of an evolution of Claude Code,” Anthropic said. “It makes the model even more proactive, and it works better with a full team.” Anthropic further explained that it’s using Tag to write code (64 percent of what comes from the product team is apparently written by Tag) as well as “chase down product metrics and data, work through support tickets … [and] help find the root cause of tricky bugs.” Integrating Claude into Slack isn’t exactly new – there’s already an existing Slack connector app for Claude, but it’s being depreciated in favor of Tag. According to the Claude in Slack help page, the existing connector will leave service on August 3, and Enterprise and Teams customers are getting access to Tag beginning today, per Anthropic’s announcement. The persistence and contextual learning that Tag brings are its major changes over the prior Claude-Slack connector, according to Anthropic. Tag is shared across a channel, meaning that everyone who interacts with it in a particular space will interact with the same Claude as their coworkers, “more like interacting collaboratively with a teammate” instead of just getting one-off advice from a bot, according to Anthropic. As mentioned above, Claude Tag will also learn the longer it’s in a channel, meaning users won’t have to explain things to it every time they chat with it. A Claude Tag based in one channel can also learn from other channels and data sources, provided that it’s given permission to do so. Beyond that, Claude Tag can also take initiative to “keep you updated about whatever it thinks you might need to know” across channels and tools it has access to, as long as ambient behavior is toggled on. Anthropic says that it’s also able to schedule tasks for itself in order to autonomously pursue its own assignments “over hours or days.” Anthropic’s announcement said that its employees have found that feature particularly helpful, as instead of doing their own work “we now spend much more of our time delegating tasks to many Claudes in parallel,” which is supposed to sound like a good thing. Act now; free credits running out and you'll need 'em Administrators of Slack environments using the old Claude for Slack app have 30 days to opt in to the Tag migration. That said, Anthropic is still keen on keeping those user numbers up, so it’s offering a hefty volume of credits to anyone on an Enterprise or Teams plan with more than 10 total seats as long as they migrate before the credits expire on September 1. According to a support page, Enterprise customers who add Tag to Slack will get $25,000 worth of credits, while Teams customers will get $2,500. Those credits are only applicable to Tag usage in Slack, but not for direct messages with Claude, which are billed to individual seats. AI token use has recently become a hot topic, especially since Anthropic did away with bundled usage pricing in favor of metered pricing that has surprised many customers with large bills. It's not clear how far those Tab credits will stretch, and Anthropic didn't respond to questions for this story. It's also worth nothing that using Tag means handing business data over to an AI model that lives on Anthropic’s servers, so caveat emptor to anyone adding this agent to channels where sensitive info may be discussed and ingested for contextual learning. Then again, Slack is shunting potentially sensitive business data into the cloud too, and it’s not always safe with the Salesforce subsidiary, either. ®

Federal law enforcement were spotted installing AI-powered surveillance towers at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in the latest escalation of President Donald Trump’s weird obsession.

In one video shared by TMZ Tuesday, U.S. Marshals escorted an LVT Mobile Security Unit to the edge of the Reflecting Pool.

President Trump looks like he's trying to catch pool vandals with some fancy new technology because new A.I. surveillance systems were just installed at the the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. 📹 pic.twitter.com/BM9An5g3Jz

— TMZ (@TMZ) June 23, 2026

In another video a day earlier, Daily Mail reporter John Michael Raasch witnessed a surveillance tower being towed in circles around the supposedly embattled landmark by U.S. Parks Police.

US Park Police have a mobile surveillance truck circling the Reflecting Pool after Trump said it was vandalized.

I’ve asked Park Police, National Park employees and local authorities about the 300ft gash Trump says is here.

No one knows or won’t comment. I don’t see a gash. pic.twitter.com/wa6hAmwl8Z

— Jon Michael Raasch (@JMRaasch) June 22, 2026

These towers do more than just record passerby: They automatically detect and alert so-called threats, and use AI-powered audio alerts, strobes, and a powerful spotlight to deter crime. Most likely, it will just catch tourists.

The installation of security equipment is a significant escalation, after several people, including a U.S. Olympian, were arrested for allegedly vandalizing the Reflecting Pool. Trump has nonsensically claimed that vandals cut a massive slit in the bottom of the pool, but has refused to provide any evidence of the crime, which no one else has spotted. Now, it seems that he doesn’t want anyone to get too close.

Trump has directed more than $16 million in renovations, but just days before the country’s 250th anniversary, the Reflecting Pool was once again filled with algae and appeared to be literally falling apart.

⚡ Quick Take

• During a panel at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, Pokémon and Aardman revealed more details about their upcoming claymation series.
• “Pokémon Tales: The Misadventures of Sirfetch’d & Pichu,” is revealed to take place in the Galar region.

This weekend, Pokémon and Aardman unveiled more content from their upcoming stop-motion series at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival.

They also revealed that Pokémon’s Galar region will be where the series, entitled “Pokémon Tales: The Misadventures of Sirfetch’d & Pichu,” takes place. Pokémon Sword and Shield also takes place in this region, so fans of the game will see some familiar terrain.

There is notable British influence on the series, with Aardman, one of Britain’s most renowned animation studios, spearheading production, and the Galar region looking geographically similar to the U.K. A press release described the humor of the series as “distinctly British.” Aardman is behind the creation of Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep.

Pokémon Tales: The Misadventures of Sirfetch’d & Pichu is an epic journey through the wilds of Galar. Our heroes embark on a gallant quest to help and protect Pokémon across the region. Their missions rarely go as planned, but their noble deeds forge their friendship as they step bravely into the unknown. Peril, alliances and rivalries, extraordinary Pokémon, and endless laughs await them.

Pokémon has already entered the world of stop-motion. Pokémon Concierge season one came out on Netflix in 2023, and the second part dropped in 2025. It followed a woman named Haru who works at a Pokémon resort. Claymation, on the other hand, is a new realm these Pokémon are stepping into.

Often, Pokémon content follows the human trainers who interact with Pokémon. However, this series tells a story from the creatures’ perspective.

“This project gives us a unique opportunity to tell stories from the point of view of Pokémon, made possible by Aardman’s extraordinary craft, remarkable artistry,” said Phil Rynda, Director of Original Animation at The Pokémon Company International. “Their warmth, and affection for this much-loved Pokémon cast are evident in every brilliantly crafted frame.”

The series has no set release date yet, but we know it won’t come out until 2027.

The post Pokémon Reveals New Details of Upcoming Stop Motion Series appeared first on Nerdist.

Menlo has created a solid rep for itself as an AI investor, all based on one gutsy $750 million move in 2024.

⚡ Quick Take

• The Multiverse is broken, and it’s all Stuart Bloom’s fault, in the trailer for the new HBO Max series Stuart Fails to Save the Universe.

Stuart Fails to Save the Universe is the latest spin-off of The Big Bang Theory, set to debut this summer on HBO Max. And now, we have our first full-length trailer for the series. The premise of Stuart Fails to Save the Universe finds Stuart David Bloom, the owner of the comic book shop Comic Center of Pasadena, who was a regular recurring character on The Big Bang Theory, in the middle of a multiversal cosmic quagmire. David Sussman will once again play the character of Stuart. In addition, Lauren Lapkus and Brian Posehn reprise their Big Bang Theory roles as Denise and Bert. You can check out the new trailer for Stuart Fails to Save the Universe right here:

The trailer for this unlikely spin-off features a few other familiar actors, including Christine Baranski and Riki Lindhome. You can also briefly see Jon Cryer in a kaleidoscope graphic, so it looks like he’ll pop in, too. In the new series’ official description, Stuart “Breaks a device built by Sheldon and Leonard, accidentally bringing about a multiverse Armageddon.” Looks like this Big Bang Theory spin-off is beating Marvel Studios to the punch with the whole Multiversal Armageddon story. Who would have thought?

HBO Max

As we see in the trailer for Stuart Fails to Save the Universe, the show will send its titular character into several different parallel realities. Most of which seem inspired by famous sci-fi movies and TV shows. One of these is designed to look just like The Matrix, while another one goes full Mad Max dystopia. You’ve always got to have one of those, right?

Over the course of the season, the cast will meet alternate-universe versions of characters we’ve come to know from The Big Bang Theory. Although who exactly is coming back from the main cast remains a mystery. The ten-episode season will debut Thursday, July 23 at 9PM ET on HBO Max. Afterward, a new episode drops every Thursday.

The post STUART FAILS TO SAVE THE UNIVERSE Trailer Is Delightfully Odd appeared first on Nerdist.

It's unclear why Klue had not revoked the credential after the limited pilot, which hackers then used to breach a system holding keys for accessing customers' data.

“CNN was right about the war, and I was wrong,” reads the Hill headline of a column by Becket Adams. “When it comes to President [Donald] Trump’s disastrous attempt this year at playing war chief, a whole lot of conservatives got it wrong, this author included,” Adams writes. Like many conservatives, Adams was furious at media reports that Trump had failed to prepare for the consequences…

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The app would be independent of Meta's other social media offerings, although sources told the NYT that those social sites could direct users to engagement with the app.

⚡ Quick Take

• The mutant team X-Factor will soon play a big part in X-Men ’97 season two, and a group named X-Factor has been a part of the Marvel universe for forty years.

There have been multiple mutant teams in Marvel Comics using the name X-Factor, going back 40 years. There’s never been a solid “mission statement” for the team, as mutant hunters, a government strike force, and mutant private investigators have all used the name. But soon, in the second season of X-Men ’97, the team we’re introduced to is perhaps the most iconic roster of all, the team from writer Peter David’s run, which lasted from 1991 to 1994.

Marvel Comics

Cyclops’ brother Havok leads this version on the Disney+ series, a.k.a. Alex Summers. Alongside him were Polaris, Wolfsbane, Strong Guy, and Multiple Man. For X-Men ’97, the sonic screamer Siryn is also on this team. They actually all appeared as a team before, in the original X-Men: The Animated Series episode. But before we get to that version, we have to look back to where it began: with the original five X-Men.

The Original 5 X-Men Reunite as the First X-Factor Team Marvel Comics

By 1985, Uncanny X-Men was Marvel Comics’ biggest title. The series earned its first spin-off, a junior X-Men series titled New Mutants. But sales were very strong, and warranted a third title. Marvel’s EIC Jim Shooter had the idea of reuniting the five original X-Men, who hadn’t been together as a team since 1970. They’d come together with a new name and mission as X-Factor. There was one small problem, however. The lead female hero on the team, Jean Grey, had died five years earlier in a fairly high-profile story, The Dark Phoenix Saga.

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After debating several characters for the fifth member, including Dazzler, Marvel decided to resurrect Jean Grey. She rejoined her great love, Scott Summers/Cyclops, as well as Beast, Angel, and Iceman, who had just quit the Defenders. Starting in 1985’s X-Factor #1, they would pose as mutant hunters, working for Hodge Industries. While working for Hodge, they were secretly taking the young mutants they apprehended and training them in using their powers as Professor X had trained them as teens. A major X-Men villain, Apocalypse, debuted in the pages of X-Factor in 1986. This version of the team lasted 70 issues, until 1991, when the original five rejoined the X-Men in Marvel’s massive “Mutant Genesis” relaunch.

Cyclops’ Brother Havok Leads the Second X-Factor Team of Government Heroes Marvel Comics

X-Factor was now a popular title without a team. The U.S. Government operative Valerie Cooper co-opted the name X-Factor for her government-sanctioned mutant hero team, which would operate in a high-profile capacity. This lineup included two early X-Men, Havok and Polaris, Cyclops’ brother and Magneto’s daughter, respectively. Former New Mutant Rahne Sinclair (Wolfsbane) joined them, as did the replicating Multiple Man (Jamie Madrox), and Strong Guy, musclebound former bodyguard to the stars. Occasionally joining them was Magneto’s son, Quicksilver. This version of the team mixed sitcom humor with soapy drama and superheroics, similar to what would come later in pop culture with shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer. This team was together from X-Factor #71 to #100.

Marvel Comics

Eventually, this lineup would split up, but Valerie Cooper soon drafted other mutants into service. Forge led this more paramilitary team, which also included shapeshifter Mystique, Bishop’s sister Shard, Wild Child, and the villain Sabretooth. By the time these characters joined, Peter David had left the title, and G.I. Joe writer Howard Mackie replaced him. Without David at the helm, the popularity of the team dropped. Although, as an X-Men spin-off, it always sold rather well. X-Factor volume one ended in 1997 with issue #149. The team name “X-Factor” would then remain dormant for almost a decade.

X-Factor Becomes a Mutant Private Investigations Operation Marvel Comics

Eventually, Peter David returned to the team he helped popularize in a new relaunch in 2005. He reimagined the concept for the 2000s. Instead of a government team, he brought back Jamie Madrox to create X-Factor Investigations, a P.I. firm serving mutant interests. Among the cast were former X-Factor members from David’s earlier run, like Strong Guy and Wolfsbane. Now joining them were former X-Force members Rictor, Shatterstar, and Siryn. Eventually, Havok and Polaris rejoined the team as well, along with former X-Men like Longshot and Darwin, and Generation X’s Monet St. Croix. This version of X-Factor would canonize long-held fan theories, making Rictor and Shatterstar a gay couple. X-Factor volume 2 lasted for eight years, running from 2005 to 2013.

X-Factor, the Corporate Superteam Marvel Comics

X-Factor rebranded yet again, once again with Peter David at the helm. This time, in the All-New X-Factor series, which lasted all too briefly. In this iteration, Polaris led the team, now backed by the massive corporation Serval Industries. Essentially, instead of working for the government, they were on a corporate payroll. This brought the concept back to its ’80s roots. Among the members were Gambit, Quicksilver, former New Mutants Cypher and Warlock, and even the former villain Danger. Sadly, this series only ran for twenty issues. And it was Peter David’s final run on a comic book titled X-Factor. Overall, David wrote 13 years of X-Factor comics.

X-Factor in Modern Marvel Comics Marvel Comics

During the Krakoan era, when mutantkind lived in its own prosperous nation, the name X-Factor was used for a special team led by Northstar. This roster included Polaris, Prestige, Aurora, Daken, Prodigy, and Eye-Boy. They investigated mutant crime, as even in their special paradise, mutant crimes did occur. After the Fall of Krakoa, a new X-Factor team was formed, with original member Angel (Warren Worthington) in charge. This was once again a government sanction teamed, and included Havok once again. This series was also short-lived. But without a doubt, a new X-Factor team will rise again. Simply put, after four decades, they’re too much of a Marvel Comics staple to stay on the sidelines too long.

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